Night nursing advice needed!

I've been co-sleeping with 8 mo LO for 5months now and she typically nurses about every two hours on either side. We have had a wonderful breastfeeding experience and we both love it.

Her bottom teeth sprouted about 4 weeks ago and over the past week she is latching lazily--only on the nipple, not including areola. It is not only painful, but creates an extremely unpleasant sensation that makes me want to crawl out of my skin and I can't help but pop her off because I can't stand the way it feels--almost reflexive response to it. Very unpleasant.

I contacted my local LLL support contact and she gave me good advice on going back to basics and pretending like this is all new and retraining LO but trying to open her mouth more and cradling her instead of side-laying. But this is causing her to wake up too much now and then neither of us is sleeping very much now and we both end up frustrated. I'm very concerned that she will lose interest because it is becoming such a trial for both of us and I'm really losing my willpower to overcome this hurdle. It's taken its toll on me and I'm exhausted, but I desperately want to continue nursing for both of our sakes.

Additionally--her nursing style is to latch, eat heartily for a few minutes, then stay latched and snooze both during the day and at night. I work during the week so I dont' mind this time with her on the weekend day, but I'd like a little more freedom at night to sleep without lips on me for up to 6 hours--but I don't want to send the message that her happy place isn't available to her... any advice?

Re: Night nursing advice needed!

Remember when your LO was learning how to nurse for the first time and hadn't gotten the hang of sidelying nursing yet and nighttime was rough then and you felt like it was never going to end, but then it did? (or was that just my own experience? ) Well, I'm fairly certain that once your LO gets used to nursing with bottom teeth now, you'll fall back into a nice, easy rhythm-- hang in there! I also had a pretty similar experience when DD's bottom teeth came in-- I know the knee jerk reaction of wanting her off me, now, because of the weird discomfort her new teeth was causing. I would definitely work on the latch, make sure that's good, but I don't see why you can't gently break suction once she's done actively nursing at night. My DD, again, does the same thing at night, and I finally decided enough was enough, and broke her latch. More often than not, she just continued to sleep peacefully, even though I was convinced she would protest. Sometimes she'll start rooting again, at which point I'll let her latch back on and start over. But she's not attached all night long, and she definitely still knows where her happy place is.